Google, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Higher search engine rankings for small businesses
Words by Jay Boston on Mar 05, 2007
When it comes to gaining a high ranking or position within Google, there are two distinct avenues you can choose. Similar to The Matrix where Neo had to choose either the red pill or the blue pill, they both have their benefits and both have their disadvantages. Either the quick fix (red pill) or the long term benefits (blue pill) is what you need to decide and thankfully unlike The Matrix, you can choose both. Just incase you haven’t seen The Matrix, Neo chose the blue pill.
The same goes with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - the Blue Pill of your website content and Pay Per Click (PPC) inclusions - the Red pill.
Search Engine Optimization when done correctly, completely and with integrity - works. Making sure your website is optimized for Google to search, index and rank with ease will influence your website positioning within search results. Although this process is time consuming and provides a slower response than pay-per-click, the long term benefits ensure your website is indexed at its best.
On the flip side, Pay Per Click is an immediate inclusion into popular search engines such as Google, NineMSN and Yahoo through their own sponsored advertising setup. You will appear within the sponsored listing areas within these search engines on the search results you have assigned keywords and phrases to (depending on the budget you have set). What’s even better is you can choose the text to appear for your listing including a short description and the website address.
However, statistics show that only 5% of search engine users even look at sponsored listings in search results – more so 2% actually click on these links. This does not mean you should rule out pay per click as 5% of people searching for your business offering is still a great benefit. If 2000 searchers looked for your keyword, this means 100 searchers will look at your listing and 10 of those will click onto your website.
This means targeted, specific clicks from search engines to your website – providing your listing defines what you offer. Thankfully, all search engine sponsored listings will only charge you “per click”, not per impression (how many times your listing is seen).
As more and more research is conducted on search engines, it has been found that searchers will only concentrate their vision on the organic listing (the results which typically appear on the left hand side). The peripheral vision of users can become so condensed, searches often when asked cannot remember what appears outside of the results listing. Try drawing a typical Google results page – can you remember the whole website or just where the results are?
Therefore, how do you ensure you reach the other 95% of searchers who don’t look at the sponsored listings? The answer is Search Engine Optimization. As explained before, organic listings are those listing which appear on the left hand side of most search engine result pages. They are there because search engine spiders (programs which search the internet for websites) locate websites and index it based on a massive algorithm. This algorithm determines a website’s relevance, keywords, phrases, code, and quality of content.
Gone are the days where filling up a website with the same word will ensure you are placed highly in search engines for that word. There are roughly 40 areas of a website’s content and build that search engines analyze to give you your listing.
As a guide, here are the top 5 areas of a website which you can update yourself to give you a better ranking…
- Ensure your page title contains the major keywords you want to be found using – keep it to less than 40 characters as search engines rarely index more than this.
- Meta information – make sure the keywords and phrases you want to be found with are located within your description and keywords – most important first!
- Create a site map – a link to a site map (a page that lists the pages and links within your website) from your homepage will ensure search engines locate all pages within your website.
- Keyword focused copy – when writing the information for your website, try to make natural use of the key search words and phrases in this information however don’t be too overpowering with these words – Google can now recognize keyword "jamming" or "stuffing".
- Link relationships – where possible, ask business partners, clients, affiliates, suppliers and customers to create a link relationship with you. Link relationships are created when two websites link to each other. If the content on the two websites is similar, Google will see this as a healthy relationship and identify these sites as credible sources of information. The more links between relevant websites, the more credible your website becomes.
The above does not guarantee page 1 position results however will greatly influence a higher ranking. When it comes to gaining higher rankings, it is always best to hire experts to do this for you. Why would you let a guy off the street do your tax return?
So which is best – SEO or PPC? They of course have their own pros and cons and it’s really is up to the individual business’ requirements. When you need results fast and you’re on a tight budget, choose the red pill (PPC) – it won’t draw the attention of all searchers however works as a band aid solution to gaining quick results.
When your aim is to appear within the organic search engine results that gain the attention of all searchers (depending on your position and ranking), take the blue pill and utilize all the benefits of Search Engine Optimization. It does take time and the benefits are much greater.
When Search Engine Optimization is executed correctly by experts, the results are clear, focused, and easy to manage.
Lemonade has been in the online industry for 7 years now and has seen search engines grow from favorites lists to full-functioning indexes. Lemonade have throughout this time applied best practices, optimized for premium search engine listing and have produced some very great results for companies such as BIG4 Holiday Parks and The Rose St. Artists Market.
When you need a company to manage and control your Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing or Pay Per Click campaigns, Lemonade has the strategics, processes and practicalities to ensure you gain exceptional focused and targeted results.